Amazed and Confused

There are things people buy that they can easily make themselves that make me wonder why they don't. Butter for instance is such a simple thing to make. Takes maybe 20 minutes tops. Bread, get a bread maker and you can do a thousand other things while your doing so. Cooking. When did people start to cook out of boxes? I hear all the excuses. "I have no time with my family, games and all the after school things I barely have time to make any dinner, more often I order pizza or stop and get fast food." "I don't make anything that requires more than 15 minutes when I can pick up the phone and order whatever I want to eat"

Yes, it is convenient and we do it ourselves at times. But not every night. Have people forgotten how to cook or did they never learn how. Some have no interest at all. I think many are waking up but many are in a word.....lazy. They would bristle at the word but if they realized how many chemicals are in the food that comes from boxes they might not reach for them so often. If I read on a label things I can't pronounce or have no clue what the hell it is or what it does to your body then I just don't buy it. I have to read labels because I have a deadly allergic reaction to nuts. Any nut, nut oil or anything to do with them. You would be amazed how they are starting to hide nuts in thing. Under NATURAL ingredients. HELLO! Yes, nuts are natural but my throat swells shut and I cannot breath...period.

We have a rather large garden  every year. We grow stuff we eat from organic seed which is getting harder and harder to find. Things seem to be early this year. We had strawberries in MAY! Eggplant is getting bigger and my tomatoes have baby tomatoes already not just blossoms. Our August berries are budding already. I do a lot of canning every year so I can keep garden fresh veggies in the middle of winter. My husband counts the canned pears. He carefully calculates how many he can eat at breakfast until the pear trees bloom again. Applesauce is another thing he counts. Applesauce on everything breakfast and god knows, none of us can eat toast without jam or jelly.

Our main crop every year is Timothy Hay. Certified organic hay. We sell to a company that makes mini bales for rabbits, guinea pigs, rats and other small creatures. We sell 90 pd bales. We do save out some for our critters for winter but the rest we sell. Its about a 14 days process with 10 folks on hand to help. Getting it cut, tedded, died and baled and stacked in the sheds to beat the rain is common for us. Some years we have beat it literally by minutes.

Last year I hired a cook. After years of driving one of the tractors and trying to cook 3 meals a day was getting to me. The old adage an Army runs on its stomach is very true. Full employee's also work harder and better if they are full and happy. The same guy is actually taking his vacation as a Exe chef to come cook for us again because he had so much fun. OK by me, he had just gotten out of the Coast Guard as a chef and was between gigs so he took on the job. He is a lot of fun and really can cook up a good meal AND he bakes. We were all very happy.

So the upshot is look into making stuff. It doesn't take much time and is much healthier in the long run for you and the kiddo's.